In related news, apparently the new(ish?) Minecraft EULA contains three interesting terms (summarized by me): For "any content available on or through" Minecraft that you make, you must give Mojang full rights to your work. In addition, you also must make your work open source. You cannot make money from Minecraft in any way, shape or form. From a legal perspective: By making a mod or addon for MC, you do create a derivative work. Creating a derivative work does not mean that they can automatically open source your work. You are still in the legal wrong if you create an unauthorized derivative work without license. From a moral perspective: Yes, there are a lot of pay-2-win servers out there are that are fairly greedy. Yes, perhaps mods should be open source. However, that is an entire debate in that of itself, and whether you believe that this is right or wrong, I find that the practical situation is of considerably greater importance. From a practical perspective: They cannot actually prevent you from physically releasing something that violates those terms. However, they can revoke your Minecraft accounts. They can choose to sue you on basis of an unauthorized derivative work. They can make it hard for others to install 'unauthorized' software. From a realistic perspective: They may not choose to actually sue anyone. There will always be people who "break the rules." However, this has the chilling effect that fewer (considerably?) people will write mods/plugins/addons/etc. for Minecraft. Almost no one benefits from this situation. In comparison: Valve, who is known to be friendly to modders, as well as many other companies, have far less draconian terms. You own the content that you make, and Valves provides a license to you to use their IP as necessary. If I recall correctly, Notch's original stance was that mods that you make for Minecraft are yours, but this was not codified in a legal document.
Although as a modder I can live by those terms, I think they should be changed by Mojang. No. 3 is fine, there are too many servers that make money off of their half-witted players. Do you see SKCraft doing that? No! It's a good server. However, points 1 and 2 are not really valid. The mod owner should have rights to his mod, but also give credit to Mojang for making the game. He can also decide whether the mod is open source. Come to think of it, most modders make money through adfly to keep themselves alive and making mods. Mojang should rethink all these terms.
now on stock market, the lawyer trolls and other profit-lurking fellow will convert Mojang into a cash cow. up to legacy mojang folks and community to stop that.
So running a bukkit server with donation packs is illegal now... HAHAHAHA. "Hi Mr Shotbow network, stop selling ranks and pay for your 10k player network out of your pocket!" What's gotten into Mojang lately... Money probably
Minecraft is an aging game, and Mojang is almost certainly looking at declining revenues from it. If they start threatening legal action against authors or distributors of "derivative works", it would have an immediate, negative effect. A decline in new user content would result in fewer active players, and that in turn would negatively effect new game purchases. Mojang is not likely to be quite that boneheaded. I suspect that the new EULA's language has more to do with Mojang's lawyers ensuring the company's legal protection is rock solid. Lawyers like contracts that offer a daunting prospect for anyone who might want to take them on. The new language may not offer the best PR for the company, but most people will not stop playing or modding unless Mojang actually starts going after people. Another possibility is that Mojang is preparing the ground for some kind of premium/official/certified server program, where for-profit server operators would pay a subscription to Mojang to operate legally,and would get special listing or other benefits in exchange. That's one way Mojang could maintain some cash flow as Minecraft continues to age. I doubt that's what's going to happen, but it's possible.
I was having the same tough as glitch, I think a certified server program is already there and they need to make it official. The developing of realms brought them a lot far in the sense of server know-how, when I started playing minecraft I was thinking about why minecraft did not provide proper hosting service for the game instead of only profiting from the game it self, then realms came on and it was probably the perfect research-and-devel they could ever have done. But hey, everything and nothing is possible. Only mojang knows what is going on, but to me it seems that an eula like that goes against gpl rules, in that sense they cannot include gpl licenced code or CCNCSA content into their game so they just might want to make sure not to have to untie that knot, they also just might be scared that code they have copied and included in minecraft is with a licence that will clash with theirs and somebody might sue them ( like http://gpl-violations.org/ ). When I asked you sk in a mail to have a chit-chat I wanted to ask you exactly what you where thinking of this eula change, then the day passed by and now I found the topic xD better late than never, I should have come straight here. Btw, did they ever revoke somebody account for license violation? and even so what stops anybody to buy a gift card for the loser to start over? Again pardon the ingenuous question and having popped in the topic but this legal mumbojumbo always fascinated me.
The EULA isn't saying that you need to license your work under GPL, or that you have to make your content open source, but rather that you can't play the game if you don't make your work available in that manner. Regardless, the EULA is poorly written and it looks like a non-lawyer wrote it.
This eula contradicts itself in many aspects. ....? ...like the right that you own your work and have to explicitly give permission for any third party to use it? No you don't, these are legal terms. but... Including ad revenue?...? obviously very vague but...
Dude, take it easy, where did I say that? do you comprehend what people write or just read quickly with out comprehending text? How is your language comprehension class? I did NOT say they want you to publish gpl. what I wrote is that ( as a friend lawyer that works for gpl violations tried to say in front of a pint of beer ) the new eula as it is GOES AGAINST 3 CLAUSE OF THE GPL and you cannot release code for minecraft using the gpl v2, v3 might have a work around. I do not intend to offend you but dammit kid chill out... I take your answer as a personal attack, I take any answer that show not to have comprehended what I have wrote as a personal attack.
I have no clue how any normal person could read my post and perceive it as a personal attack. Regardless, the EULA's content has no bearing on the application of GPL. The EULA does not legally force anyone to re-license their code, so the EULA cannot goes against any clause in the GPL. The EULA merely says that you cannot play the game if you cannot meet these terms. Therefore the only logical reason to bring up the GPL is if you think they want to force you to relicense as GPL. If they cannot force you to relicense, then who cares? The GPL is just one random contract in a world of billions, and whether two random contracts in the world are incompatible is unimportant. Furthermore, as the copyright owner of a work, you can assign as many different licenses as you want to your work. Even if you content was already licensed as GPL, you could re-license your work to be compatible with Mojang's terms provided that you still had full copyright ownership. The only difficulty is with re-purposing existing content (that exists right now) that contains third-party contributed content (where there was no transfer of copyright), but in that case, the EULA is not "going against GPL" -- it has done nothing wrong -- but rather, assuming there are no special exceptions for "third-party addons" (a subject generally not well-tested in most countries), the content can simply not be used with Minecraft. inb4. "that's not what I mean by goes against." In that case, calm down and write more clearly.
This EULA is poorly written as stated above. In hindsight this just changes the way people will play the game. People like YouTubers, Modders, and Server Owners, only if they fix their EULA and enforce it. Personally I don't like it and hope they revise it.
Joining the server and insulting the owner, what a brilliant idea!.. How to win arguments, by sk89q, now £10 at Waterstones!
Actually that EULA is not even interesting in many countries due to the fact that it is a contract which affects users which buy the game now but won't affect existing users unless the users are contacted and accept the change (that's the fact in Germany as example. Also customers would be allowed to revoke the contract due to that change and get their money back). Also there are countries in which giving away your rights of your work (e.g. source code) is also impossible (Germany again!). Thus the parts about the rights of Mojang inside of a work are pointless. To be honest at this point they should start revising their EULA again to fix those problems. Changing an environment like this that sudden is pretty much impossible now. Especially disallowing people from making money off of Minecraft in general will be a big problem (as already stated by others in this thread) due to the fact that many servers live off of their donations. Donations can easily considered being income and thus not being allowed by the EULA. That would mean the end for many big communities (and it doesn't even end with servers. You could even consider Curse making income with the game by providing solutions around it (even though they might not directly interact with the game or it's source code they are hosting modifications and plugins which at some point include at least calls to Minecraft and thus might also be term to these terms). Especially if we see the license in relation to the game itself you might notice that Minecraft itself is not even an original idea by notch. It is grabbing an idea of a previously made game and just was lucky to be there at a very specific time to go off like that. What an irony ... Well I guess we'll see what happens. But I guess they know that every change (no matter how small) might cause the game to drop from the sky like a lead zeppelin (see what I did there?).
